Valerii Zaluzhnyi, former commander-in-chief and current ambassador to the U.K., described the joint Ukrainian-U.S. headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany, as a "secret weapon" for planning military operations during the war.
"This headquarters has truly become a secret weapon for our partners and me in planning operations and formulating the requirements for their implementation," Zaluzhnyi said in a post on Facebook on April 8, following a March 29 investigation by the New York Times (NYT) into the facility.
Zaluzhnyi said the coordination center initially took shape in April 2022 at the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, before moving to Wiesbaden.
He said the headquarters allowed Ukrainian and NATO planners to assess operational needs in real time and shape logistics accordingly.
"Over time, we realized that we needed a joint operational headquarters with our partners to assess the needs for weapons and equipment based on the planning of operations," he wrote.
Zaluzhnyi said the need became critical in the summer of 2022 when Western partners questioned the utility of some weapons Kyiv was requesting.
Tim Zadorozhnyy
The resulting Wiesbaden headquarters, supported by the U.K., enabled the planning of operations, coordination of logistics, and NATO-standard formulation of requirements.
Zaluzhnyi said it helped conduct war games, forecast battlefield needs, and relay supply demands directly to Washington and European capitals.
The NYT report detailed the existence of "Task Force Dragon," an American-led initiative based in Wiesbaden that provided Ukrainian forces with real-time intelligence, including coordinates of Russian military positions — even within Russian territory.
The initiative aimed to counterbalance Russia's advantages in troop numbers and firepower.
Each day, U.S. and Ukrainian officers jointly selected targets, analyzing satellite imagery and intercepted communications and electronic signals to identify Russian deployments, which were then shared with Ukraine's military.
The NYT article also revealed tensions and confusion within the Biden administration after Ukraine sank the Moskva, Russia's Black Sea flagship, in April 2022.
According to the report, American and Ukrainian naval officers were on an intelligence sharing call when the former noticed the ship sinking on radar screens.
"Oh my God. Thanks a lot. Bye," the Ukrainians reportedly replied.
It also reported that Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive toward Melitopol was sidelined in favor of the protracted Bakhmut campaign.
Zaluzhnyi was dismissed as commander-in-chief in February 2024 and replaced by Oleksandr Syrskyi. The move followed months of speculation and media reports citing internal disagreements over Ukraine's war strategy.
The former commander-in-chief assumed the role of Ukrainian Ambassador to the United Kingdom on July 11, 2024.
Tim Zadorozhnyy
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